The Development of Beach Soccer LA Women’s Team

What started out as a local beach soccer team based in Long Beach, CA later transitioned to the name Beach Soccer LA that was previously known as Koora Beach Soccer (2016-2017). The club founder, Brian Easler made the decision to rebrand in 2017 to officially become Beach Soccer LA. Since then, Beach Soccer LA has gone through a variety of directions, changes, and plenty of development between 2017-2021. Easler has had the pleasure of hosting over 5 tournaments, beach trainings, developed a men’s team, began a women’s team and hosted local pickups in the Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, and Long Beach area.

Brian has always had interest in developing women’s beach soccer in the United States and had even taken his previous Koora team to compete in several amateur tournaments. It wasn’t until the winter of January 2020, that there was a higher demand of interest on the women’s side of the game. Brian Easler took it upon himself to contact women with different soccer backgrounds to go out to the sand and try the sport. He eventually got eight women out to consistently train on the sand in Santa Monica, CA, a mile north of the pier. Easler was training this group of women every weekend and getting 8-10 women regularly. This determined group of women were hungry to compete and purchased tickets to compete in a beach soccer tournament in Merida, Mexico that was set to happen in April 2020.

However, COVID-happened. The women were extremely motivated and continued to do ‘zoom’ training during quarantine. Unfortunately, after seeing no promising future of coming into contact with people, the number of women from the Beach Soccer LA team slowly started to decrease. Once COVID -19 cases started to go down, more women began to slowly show interest in late October 2020. Brian saw opportunity for growth with this new group of players, motivating him to put all of his efforts to host women’s beach soccer camps, friendly games against grass soccer teams, and figure out partnership deals and fundraising. After hosting a few camps and continuously posting on all social media platforms, Easler got over 15 girls to commit their mornings to training 3-5 times a week at 6am.

The environment is very healthy between us and we all get along very well…

Marta Alemany

Marta Alemany former Barcelona FC player mentioned,

“The environment is very healthy between us and we all get along very well… and being around good quality players… makes me motivated to be better.”

These girls from November 2020 on have taken their motivation for the sport to another level and all have a common goal, and that is to be the best. Beach Soccer LA women’s team has traveled to two ID camps in Florida, competed in the first women’s beach soccer league hosted by Brian Easler, and will be competing this weekend in the North American Sand Soccer Championships (NAASC) in Virginia Beach, VA .

This weekend has been long awaited and all the women are extremely excited to compete as an official squad. Beach Soccer LA will keep growing and Easler is excited to bring in more women to grow the women’s game.

Follow Beach Soccer LA on Facebook and on Instagram for up coming matches!